t of view--to a separate Minister for Foreign affairs.

With respect to the Consular Question, the Swedish negotiators declare
that a dissolution of the joint Consular Office, appears to them, in
itself, undesirable, but as an opposite opinion has long been prevalent
in Norway, and as during the preliminary negotiations, it was shown to be
"not impossible" that under certain circumstances a system with different
Consuls for each Kingdom could be established, in order to obtain the
most important advantage of the political agreement between the two
countries, they have found it expedient to advise a settlement of the
question on the following basis:

1. Separate Consular Services for Sweden and for Norway shall be
established. The Consuls of each kingdom shall be subordinate to the
authority of their own country which the latter shall have to determine.

2. The relations of the separate Consuls to the Minister for Foreign
Affairs and to the Embassies shall be regulated by laws of the same
wording which cannot be altered nor abolished without the consent of the
authorities of both Kingdoms.

It is furthermore stipulated that the Status quo with reference to the
position of the Minister for Foreign affairs and the Ambassadors should
remain intact. Each Kingdom is to have its right to decide on the
establishment of its own Consular service; the identical laws are only to
regulate the relations between the Consuls on the one side, and the
Minister for Foreign affairs and diplomatic representatives on the other.
The laws are especially designed to give a guarantee that the consuls do
not outstep the boundaries of their occupation and at the same time
secure the necessary cooperation between the Foreign Administration and
the Consular Services of the two Kingdoms[24:1].

When the Communique was issued, it was received with very great diversity
of feelings on both sides of the State boundaries. The lively discussions
which immediately sprung up concerning the actual contents of the
agreement, on which considerable divergence of opinion was held,
contributed in no small degree to the former. The debates were especially
concentrated on the contents of what was called the identical laws, and
as the different conceptions on this subject were without doubt of great
importance in the final issue of the negotiations, it is as well to give
some enlightenment on the point.

In the first part of the Communique, which decribes the of